I hate math. It’s just about numbers. They do what they’re told to do. Nothing else. How boring.
My parents were very pleased that I liked my computer and spent so much time working on it. Each time they saw me on the computer, they’d smile and say to their friends, “It’s put us back a bit, but it was worth it because Justina has never done as well.”
To keep them happy, I didn’t tell them. I developed a program where, after I entered the math problems, I hit a key and the computer computed the answers. The week before, I got my first “A” in math. The first “A” in my entire life.
Everything was going really good until the week my older, mostly bossy, sister won the spelling bee. After that, Luz was the only person everyone talked about. Thought about. Big deal.
Then one day she walked in with a couple of her girlfriends. Olga and Ana touched the skirt of the organdy, rose-flowered party dress that two of mom’s best friends had given Luz to wear to the competition. They rubbed the material against their cheeks and made all kinds of weird noises.
My mom says that in a few years I’ll be just like them. I’d rather be dead.
They talked and giggled, their heads close together. I could see their images reflected on my monitor. It was like watching a goofy movie.
Every relative alive—and I think some dead ones too—was calling to tell Luz how proud they were of her. Even a newspaper reporter called. You’d think, at the rate it was swelling, that Luz’s head wouldn’t be able to fit in our bedroom. Good. She can go live somewhere else.
While Luz was talking on the phone to another relative, Olga held the dress against her body, swinging the skirt wide and admiring herself in the mirror. “This color won’t look good on her at all,” said Olga.
Little sisters don’t count and are rarely noticed. I held my breath and kept my fingers still.
“Maybe, if they shorten the skirt and cut a bit off around the neck, it would help.” Ana pointed at the lacy neckline.
They both laughed as Ana took it and pressed it against her body.
“Oh, it looks good on you. Much better than on Luz.” Olga squinted into the mirror.
They laughed together. Ana covered her mouth with one hand. Olga squeezed her waist from laughter. The dress slipped off Ana’s body and floated to the floor. They both grabbed for the dress. When it hit the floor, a slight tearing sound filled the room.
Ana and Olga stopped and raised their heads to stare at each other. They checked the garment in their hands and saw the rip in the skirt of the dress. Olga quickly looked over at me; I stuck my face in a math book.
Ana slipped the dress onto the hanger and Olga hooked it on the door. My sister had left the dress hanging there all week, so it would be the first thing she saw each morning and the last thing she saw at night.
The two girls moved away from the dress. Ana thumbed through Luz’s homework. “Hijole, she’s done all the problems for tomorrow’s homework.”
Olga reached over Ana’s arms. “No way. She thinks she’s so hot.” She snapped the notebook open.
“Hey, what you doing?” Ana stared at her friend.
“I’ll make a copy of it tonight. In the morning, we’ll tell her we found it on the floor next to her locker.”
Ana backed up. “I don’t know…”
“She’s so wrapped up with that spelling bee thing, she’ll never figure it out. You’ll see.” Olga slipped the page into her notebook and noticed the desk drawer open. She stuck her hand inside of the drawer, and withdrew a candy bar.
“Hey, what if Luz sees you.”
Olga shrugged as she walked across the room and dropped the wrapper in my waste basket. “What’re you working on?” she asked me.
Ana looked over Olga’s shoulder. “Hey, I remember doing those baby problems. They’re not anything really hard.”
I opened my mouth when Luz rushed in, her hand automatically touching the dress. “You’ll never believe who that was on the phone. Ricardo.”
An “I-told-you-so” look crossed between Ana and Olga.
The three of them huddled on the Luz’s bed with the big César Chávez poster on the wall above it. Luz played Selena on the tape deck really loud and I had to put on my earphone.
A while later, Olga headed to the bathroom. Ana moved next to Luz. “Tomorrow could I come over and you can help me do the homework? I just can’t get those algebra problems.”
“What time? Doesn’t Olga work after school?”
“I mean, just you and me. You’re so smart and understand this stuff so much better than Olga. Things are just easier with you.”
Luz nodded.
Ana lowered her voice. “Don’t tell Olga. Okay?”
Luz cocked her head.
“She’s so insecure.” Ana’s eyes filled with big tears. “Her feelings get hurt too much. You know how she is.”
Luz and Ana pitched their voices lower as their heads bumped and they burst out laughing as Olga walked in. “What’s so funny?” She looked at her two friends.
Together they answered, “Nothing.”
Luz reached into the desk drawer. “I’ve got this really great candy bar. Want some?”
Olga tossed her hair. “Not me. I have to be careful to keep my figure just right.”
Luz didn’t hear because she was pulling out the drawer. She dumped the drawer’s contents on top of her bed, some of it falling on the floor. “Hey, my candy bar is missing.”
Ana looked at her feet. Olga searched among Luz’s books on top of the desk. “I wonder who could have taken it.” She looked in my direction.
Luz caught the reference, stomped across the room and searched in my waste basket. “What’s this doing here?” She stuck the ripped candy wrapper under my nose.
I batted it away with my hand. “Get away from me.”
“I told you—mom told you to stay out of my desk.”
I raised my voice to match hers. “I never got in your desk.”
“Oh!” Luz leaned down over me. “I guess this candy wrapper just walked across the room.”
I stood up. “Well, Turd Face, that’s just what happened.”
Luz moved around the corner of the desk and stood in front of me. “Yeah, how Hog Breath?”
I took a step toward her. “Ask your friends.” I swung my thumb at her two girlfriends who were edging towards the door.
Olga chirped. “We got to get going. See you at school tomorrow. We’ll meet at your locker. Okay?”
Ana waved a limp hand in our direction.
Luz thrust herself against me.
I stood where I was.
She was adding up all the stupid things I had done this past week. “You’re just jealous.”
“Of what? You got nothing I want.” I had been jealous. I had gotten tired of hearing about her success.
“Then how come this.” She stuck the candy wrapper under my nose again, impatience winning over sisterly love.
I snatched the wrapper out of her hand and threw it across the room. “Who cares.”
“Mamá will, when I tell her you were in my desk again.”
“You’ve got worse problems.”
“What you mean?”
“Check out your homework.”
Luz stared at me, trying to decide if I was distracting her from what I had done. Shaking her head, she walked across the room and opened her notebook. She flipped a few pages in each direction. When she couldn’t find her homework, she looked up at me. “You took my homework too.”
I whirled around and shouldered my face in front of hers. “You wish.”
We stared at each other, taking short, quick breaths onto the fuse of our anger. Our eyes blazed. Muscles knotted down my spine. The hair on the back of my neck rose in anticipation. We circled each other like two cock roosters, stalking a weak spot to attack.
She always blames me for everything. Luz’s face was flushed with sweat on her upper lip.
I squinted my eyes to keep the fear from showing. Luz wanted to be a winner. In everything.
As we stepped around each other, Luz tripped over the junk from the desk drawer and stumbled forward. She slammed against my shoulder, pitching me backward. We grabbed at each other, gripping arms, twisting and turning to stay standing.
We regained our footing to stare in shock, hands on each other’s arms. “You hit me!” I cried out.
“You hurt my arm!” came back Luz.
We drew back, releasing our hands, startled at the potential of hurting each other. “You hit me first!” I said, taking another step back from disaster.
Luz stepped backwards and flipped the chair over, almost falling. The loud crash filled the room.
My shoulder was sore. I felt the anger jam my throat. Luz was rubbing the back of her leg. We had hurt each other. Fear slid by the anger, and I tasted it.
She stared at me and I stared at her. Luz rubbed her forehead. “You hurt?” I shook my head. She spun around and fixed her dress on the doorway.
I held my breath, thinking she would blame me if she found the rip. But just then my mother walked in. “Luz, I have to talk with you.” My mother had been crying.
“What’s wrong?”
My mother sat on the edge of Luz’s bed. Luz sat next to her. I moved over and dropped on my bed, the cover billowing around me. It was then that my mother noticed the mess in the room.
“What’s going on here?” As Luz opened her mouth, Mamá said, “Don’t tell me nothing. You two been fighting?”
Luz hung her head and nodded.
My mother called me. “Come here.”
“I’m sleepy, Mamá,” I said, hoping she would leave me alone.
“Justina, get over here.”
I responded to my mother’s tone more than to her words. With a long sigh, I dragged myself over and sat down next to her.
She looked from me to my sister. “Which one of you is going to tell me?”
Both of us looked away.
“Luz?”
“Ask her. She started it.”
My mother shifted around on the bed to peer into my face. “Justina, talk to me.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Mira hija, I want to know.”
I looked up and it seemed like my mother was about to cry. “Don’t cry, Mamá. I didn’t mean it.”
She waited.
I sighed. “Luz accused me of going into her desk.”
“And?”
Somehow she always knew there was more. “And it wasn’t me.”
Luz jumped in. “Who else could it have been?”
I hung my head down and twisted the bedspread around my fingers. Mamá looked up into my face. My shoulders slumped forward. “It was Olga that took it.”
Luz jumped up. “No way. You’re making it up.”
“Am not. Just wait until tomorrow. She took your homework, too, and she’s gonna tell you she found it near your locker.”
Luz eyed me as she was deciding how much to believe. “Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“You never gave me the chance. Just like you haven’t given anyone else the chance for anything ever since you won that spelling contest.”
My mom smiled. “I’m sorry mija. I know Luz has been a bit overwhelmed with her good fortune. I forgot how hard it could be on little sisters.” Mamá hugged me.
I shrugged out of her hug. I had a week of stored-up hurts. “But the grown ups are all the time asking about when am I going to do something as good as my sister.”
“Mijita, I can’t defend the insensitivity of some grown ups, but we have always thought you were the best. Each of you, in your own ways, are special to us. That is how it has always been.”
“But I get so tired of hearing about her.” I pointed at Luz.
“Mira, just the other day, we were telling someone about the smart program you made to do your math problems.”
I stared at my mother with my mouth open. “You knew?” She nodded. “How?”
“Your father and I talked about it with your teacher and we figured that making that program was harder than solving the problems.”
“My teacher knows too?” I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“But right now, it is important that we stick together.” She turned back to Luz. “That phone call that you just heard…”
Luz nodded. “It was someone wishing me good luck?”
The sound of my mother’s voice told me something was very wrong.
“No it wasn’t.” My mom took my sister’s hand. “It was the school principal. He had something very serious to tell us.”
Luz moved onto her knees and held her breath. We both knew that our mother would never tell us bad news.
“The school board met the other night. They had this long talk…”
Luz gulped. “About me?”
Mamá nodded. “Someone told them that you stole the list of the words used at the spelling bee.”
Luz jumped to her feet. “They saying I stole the words to the contest?”
“Mrs. Cuellar has arranged for them to hold an open school meeting in two days.” Mamá reached out and touched my sister’s arm. “They said they are willing to listen to whatever we have to say, but…” Mamá shrugged.
“But I do know the spelling. I do. I won fair and square.” Luz stomped her foot. “You know I did, Mamá. You know it. Tell them.”
“I did, Mijita. I told them over and over. But they insisted that measures had to be taken to set a good example for the future.”
I could tell that mom was hurting as bad as Luz was.
“That means…” Luz stomped across the room, swooped the dress off the door, and threw it across the room. Like a ghost of a dream, the dress fluttered to a crumpled heap on the floor. “I don’t care. They can take their spelling bee, for all I care. I didn’t want to go anyway.” Luz held her head high. I could see that her chin was quivering.
I picked up the dress. Smoothing out the wrinkles, I hung the dress back up on the door, then stood in front of my sister. “I care. You would have beaten them all.”
Luz collapsed into Mamá’s arms, crying. I sat on the other side of my sister, rubbing her back. Luz reached out and took my hand.
“You would have won. I know you would have,” I said softly.
Luz opened her eyes and stared past our mother.
“Honest.” I crossed my heart.
“You really think so?” Luz looked at me.
“Yup. No one can beat you in spelling.”
“There’s a part, inside of me, that was kinda of scared that maybe I would lose.” Luz said it so softly that I had to lean over to hear.
Mamá stroked her hair. “Mijita…”
I said first, “No way. You’re better than the electronic dictionary everyone gave you last week. You don’t take no batteries.” I giggled as Luz grinned through her tears. “You know, whenever I’m writing a paper, it’s you that fixes my spelling. You would have won. I’m totally sure of that. So are you. That’s why your head got so big.”
Luz sat up and stuck her finger in my face. Mamá raised a hand. I grinned. Luz stopped and smiled back.
“You had a right to feel like the best. You are the best.” I hugged my sister.
“You’re still a Hog Breath.”
“Turd Face.”
We giggled into each other’s shoulders.
The next morning, I waited until Luz left. Then I whispered to my abuelita about the rip in Luz’s dress. As I left for school, I saw my abuelita sitting in the front room with her sewing box out and Luz’s dress on her lap. I smiled. Luz would never find out.
Little sisters are good to have around, sometimes.